In a couple of months, giant claws will have eaten their way through 465 apartments being razed
at Metro West.

But some day, those and other units on up to 30 acres might be replaced by “affordable” senior
housing, Nick Tambakis, chief operating officer of Wingate LLC of New York, said last week. Wingate
owns the 100-acre, 1,732-unit apartment complex on the West Side south of Westland Mall.

“We have a buyer,” Tambakis said. “It’s under contract and moving along.”

“I’m a cynic about this,” Hatmaker said. “They’ve said they had buyers before, and then the
buyers were elusive.”

The remainder of the complex is in Franklin Township, which is not pushing for demolition.
Tambakis estimated that the remaining units are 60 percent occupied.

He said a couple of prospective buyers are interested in the frontage along Georgesville Road. A
market study suggests a budget hotel would complement a potential high-end hotel at the nearby
Hollywood Casino Columbus.

The corporation bought the complex in 2005 and has put $10 million into repairs and renovations,
Tambakis said. However, litigation involving the estate of a principal in the corporation has
slowed those efforts, he added.

“We weren’t able to keep the property up like we wanted,” he said.

The units being torn down were found to be structurally unsound and uninhabitable.

Almost 50 years ago, the dream of local developers Seymour Luckoff and Buddy Roth was called
Lincoln Park West. It attracted professionals and well-paid workers from area manufacturing plants
with amenities then seldom found in central Ohio apartment complexes — an indoor pool, social
activities, pancake breakfasts and a feeling of community.

“It was full of people with good jobs,” said Chuck Patterson, chairman of the Greater Hilltop
Area Association. He spent a lot of time there as a teenager visiting friends and their
families.

Tom Fortin was a 12-year-old riding around the complex in trucks from his father’s business
helping to install ornamental ironwork on the buildings.

“It was a very vibrant community of very happy people,” Fortin said. “There was a lot of social
and recreational activities that kind of bonded residents. Residents just loved living there.”

But as the fortunes of the West Side declined over the decades, so did those of Lincoln Park
West. The good-paying jobs vanished when employers such as White Westinghouse left in 1988 and
Delphi in 2007. The casino rose from the Delphi site.

Westland Mall hemorrhaged customers in the 1990s when Easton Town Center and Tuttle Crossing
were built.

The exodus of tenants quickened, and so did the pace of police calls — 4,300 in 1998, according
to Franklin Township police and the sheriff’s office.

In 2000, Fortin, by then a developer, took over the complex, which had also gone by the names
Shannon Way and Darby Woods. He restored the Lincoln Park West name. Occupancy was 22 percent.

Most of his tenants were first-generation Latinos and Somali immigrants. He empathized with
them. His grandparents, the Fortunatos, had emigrated from Sicily.

He provided free apartments for social workers to use as offices, food and clothing pantries and
a job-procurement center. The occupancy rate rose to 87 percent as immigrants flocked to the
complex. Deportation was not a big fear in those days.

Then 9/11 happened.

“Peaceful, hard-working, fantastic parents, church-going people all of a sudden had a target on
their back,” Fortin said.

Fortin sold his interest in the property in 2002 after Columbus Police Chief James Jackson
blocked attempts to annex it to the city, saying he didn’t have enough officers to patrol the
massive complex. Fortin was seeking lower water and sewer rates.

Two years later, a fire in one unit killed 10 people and added to its sagging reputation.